[blindlaw] New Scanning Option

[Ford, Tim (CDPH-OLS)]

I recently discovered, quite by accident, a new scanning option that may
be of interest.

My office recently installed Adobe Acrobat 8 Professional, Version
8.0.0, on the computer with the scanner that I have been using to create
PDF versions of briefs an other material I need to send to others
electronically.  I had my assistant scan in a brief that I was to file
electronically.  

I pulled up the results, just  to print it and have my assistant make
sure all the pages were there.  To my surprise, JAWS started
automatically reading the document.  I had my assistant check, and on
the screen, and what we printed, was the typical image only format, with
my scrawled signature and all.

so apparently what this new version of Adobe has is the capacity to add
a quite good optical character recognition of the text.  The recognition
quality was quite good, better than what I am used to with OpenBook.  

So the advantages of this is that:

1.  You have a PDF file with the actual intact original, so if there are
any scan errors to figure out, you have the original there for a sighted
person to review.  

2.  You also have the actual original that you can print and/or send
electronically to others.  If the person you send it to does not use a
screen reading program, then they will not notice any difference between
what they see and any other Adobe PDF image only scan.  

3.  If the recipient has a screen reader installed, then Adobe knows
that, and automatically turns on the converted text imbedded
information.

Oh yes, and there is yet another neat aspect.  Although the Adobe text
conversion itself is not something you can edit, all you do is select
whatever text you want, including using control plus a to select all,
and paste that in to a Word document.  That gives you everything that
the Adobe text recognition picked up.

For my Adobe reader software, I have the typical free reader version, so
you do not need to have the Adobe Professional version installed except
on the machine that has the scanner on it.

I do not know the cost of the Adobe Professional version software.
However, this is the typical software product that most offices now use,
and is certainly something that would be affordable by most any office
of any size.


 Sincerely,
Tim Ford